Arkansas kills 53 men, all of them civilians, in the worst accident in "U.S. space age defense" when a diesel generator catches fire, smothering the victims. The missile, fully loaded with liquid fuel, did not burn. Its nuclear warhead had been removed while the civilian workmen updated the physical plant of the complex. Two civilians were able to flee the fire area through a tunnel to the access rooms and launch center. "The fire probably burned less than an hour", said Capt. Douglas Wood, Public Information Officer for Little Rock Air Force Base, which commands the 18 Titan II silos ringing Central Arkansas, "but up to 12 hours later smoke was still billowing in the silo." 17 August Sikorsky HSS-1N Seabat, 136, of the Royal Netherlands Navy, crashes near Noordwijk, Netherlands. 24 August Lockheed KC-130F, BuNo 149802, suffers a partial failure of its number one engine during takeoff and veers off the runway into the water off Kai Tak Airport; 59 of 71 killed. The aircraft was flying US Marines back to Vietnam after a rest and relaxation (R&R) leave in Hong Kong. 25 August First Curtiss-Wright X-19A prototype, 62-12197, is destroyed in a crash at the FAA's National Aviation Facilities Experimental Center, Caldwell, New Jersey, (formerly NAS Atlantic City), when gearbox fails followed by loss of propellers at 0718:44 hrs EDT. Test pilot James V. Ryan and FAA copilot Hughes eject in North American LW-2B seats as the now-ballistic airframe rolled inverted at 390 feet, chutes fully deployed in 2 seconds at ~230 feet. Elapsed time between prop separation and ejection was 2.5 seconds. Airframe impacts in dried out tidewater area after completing 3/4 of a roll at 0719. Crew suffers minor injuries from ejection through canopy. The program is subsequently cancelled. This will be the last airframe design from two of the most famous company names in aviation. Second prototype, reported in some sources to have been scrapped, survives at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Maryland, and is recovered in 2007 by the National Museum of the United States Air Force for preservation. 30 August Third pre-production aircraft, MiG Ye-155R-5, is lost during its acceptance flight out of the Gorkii aircraft factory (Plant No.21), injuring test pilot L. I. Minenko. 17 September C-130B Hercules TNI-AU T-1306, of the Indonesian Airforce, hit by friendly fire in Borneo. Pilot Major Soehardjo and co-pilot Captain Erwin SP Suroso escaped the burning plane after